Dividers utilized in stores for mass merchandising, are typically constructed of wire fences with hooks at their front and rear ends for reception in the holes of shelves. The dividers must be sturdy, constructed at low cost, and easily installed on conventional shelves of the type that have a row of holes near the front and rear of the shelf. A highly successful divider which is in wide use, includes a heavy duty outer wire bent into a largely rectangular shape, a number of parallel short wires bridging the top and bottom of the outer wire and welded thereto, and a pair of hooks welded to the bottom of the outer wire at the front and rear of the divider. The outer wire is bent into a rectangular loop with the extreme wire ends in line but slightly spaced from one another along the bottom of the divider. The hooks can be installed by bending the divider to slightly separate the ends of the outer wire, to thereby separate the hooks so they can pass through the shelf holes. The divider is then released to spring back to its original configuration, with the hooks then lying fairly tightly in the shelf holes. Although this divider construction is very simple, it requires that the front and rear holes of the shelves be spaced a predetermined distance apart, such as 15 inches plus or minus perhaps 1/32nd of an inch. This is because the divider lengthens only about 1/8th inch when bent back, and a spring back of about 1/16th of an inch from the extended length is necessary to secure the hooks in the shelf holes.
A problem that has arisen is that different shelf manufacturers have adopted slightly different spacings between their front and rear rows of holes. For example, for a nominal 14-1/2 inch spacing, different manufacturers may utilize a spacing of the holes of between 14-1/4 inches to 14-3/4 inches. Accordingly, manufacturers of dividers have had to produce and stock many different dividers of the prior art type, all of a nominal 14-1/2 inch length but with different dividers designed for shelves of different shelf manufacturers. A divider which could be securely installed on shelves of the same nominal size but which varied appreciably in the spacing between front and rear holes, would greatly reduce the number of different sizes which had to be manufactured and stocked by a divider manufacturer. However, for any such divider to gain acceptance it would have to be producable at a low cost, comparable to that of prior art dividers, utilizing primarily the wire bending and welding equipment commonly found in divider manufacturing shops, with any additional components being easily manufactured in high volume, such as simple sheet metal stampings.